Self indulgent

My current favourite picture
"What chocolate? We don't know what you're talking about"

Ch ch ch changes

Weekends used to be about going out getting drunk full english recovery, maybe mooch round town and a big ride on sunday, oh how things change.
Friday night get home feed kids
Hungry son?



Saturday amuse ourselves while mum shops






Sunday we do the big shop while mum has a lie in (it is mothersday after all)



Admittedly drunkeness and riding will form a large part of next weekend :-)

Plenty to say

Took charlie out for a spin in leverhulme park on saturday, first time off road since his first ever ride. He doesn't like the fast bumpy bits (downhill with a kicker at the bottom) but he likes getting sideways round gravelly corners :-) Brand new hope hoops don't like getting sideways on gravelly corners, managed to put a bit of a wobble on them. Not sure how much is the rim and how much is the not so good halo ust tyre. We went down to the river and he walked straight into it and had a splash around, then we went for a run around on the footy field, nice.
A rather nice commute on monday, the baby bunnies and geese were out, the trails were dry, the sun was shining, few people about on the way home so got a lot of use out of my bell (which I've just noticed has n+1 written on the side :-) ) everyone friendly having a nice day, top stuff. Bagged myself a pair of oakley MX goggles on the way home too, might be useful for wet downhill days. Tuesday was a bit grim so back on the road. Now stabiliser has almost scared me off riding dual carriageways I think his report on how normal inoffensive drivers gang up with their collective stupidity to kill cyclists is bang on. I've had a couple of 4x4 drivers swerve round me at the last minute and the person behind (too close behind) come passed incredibly close. I've been dodging the 50mph DC on my commute but the alternatives aren't great. A slow cycle route which has 1 chicane and 6 slalom gates within a quarter mile. A road route, extra 1.5miles, a section of narrow 30 limit rd which often has speeders rat running, a roundabout where I turn right and often get drivers (also turning right) going round it the wrong way to over take me followed by a fast downhill heavy with traffic and lots of side roads for people to pull out on me. After trying various routes I'm back to the DC but totally hogging the left lane to prevent the above. But instead of just primary I'm between dead centre of lane and the right of centre, 2 mornings of that haven't been too bad, no attempted kills, no beeps either (yet) tho I have noted a few drivers muttering to themselves whilst passing me. See how it goes.
No-one else could make tuesday night ride and my mrs looked tired so I stayed home, went out for a ride last night instead. Got a bloody flat again down wildeswood (ust tyre+stans), pumped it back up and it stayed put for rest of ride (and overnight) dunno whats going on there, burping, badly applied rim strip (that'll be me then) or just crap tyre. 2lads, wildes, pike, san marino, quarry, home through eagly and hall ith wood. Very tired at the end, fish, chips, cake, strawberrys and a bucket of tea to replenish energy.
Might have bagged myself a bargain, dt240 wheel, mint condition rim, totally shagged bearings, much cheapness. Will have to see how much it costs to get it up and running before I decide if it was bargain or bust, I did a full bearing change on my very similar 440 for £25ish so fingers crossed.

That was wierd

Mrs giving birth to our second child in our front room, she always wanted a "home confinement" but last time it wasn't to be, complications. This time she wanted a home thingy with added wet. This is Charlies inflatable pool at his grandpas

and this is the behemoth his mum bought for his lil' siblings water birth.

Thats a hell of an upgrade for charlie's paddling pool next summer! Easily fit 2 adults in there, 3 or 4 if you're good friends ;-) Took 10minutes to inflate with leccy pump but an hour to fill. Helped a lot with pain relief apparently altho it was a bit dark inside the pool for the midwives (3 of them!) to see what they were doing so I broke out the hope 4. "Ooh that's bright isn't it?" money well spent! Mrs started flagging after 10 hours of contractions so I pepped her up with some caffeine power gels, sickly sweet temporary recovery food stuff of champions. It was getting on, things didn't seem to be progressing so an ambulance was called. As we heard the sirens the mother in law pulled the gas&air out of mr good wife's mouth and said "MTFU and push" (I may be paraphrasing). And lo with some mighty heaving and a fair bit of screaming Alex* was born.


Awesome and the bike geek in me is proud to know the lighting and nutritional needs of this home confinement were supplied by my hobby :-)

For those who care about such things weight was an eye watering 10lb 6oz, it has to be said he looks the double of charlie, well actually more of a 1.5 scale replica than a double.

*provisionally, we both like alex but his full name sounds bloody stupid, especially in a bolton accent (we only realised this when the midwife asked us for his name for the notes). Hmm.

School run dad

I took Charlie to nursery for first time today, by bike :-) he was cool with it. Nice short stretch down a quiet pavement, his mum made me promise to stay off the road, she allegedly trusts me and my riding but not drivers. His cahir on the back of pompino was a bit of a bouncy ride so think I will stick it back on the inbred, bit more cushioning with big tyres (and that "steel is real" trail buzz dampening of course!).
Gets bloody busy in that nursery car park just before 9, some stupidly big 4x4s too, with only one entrance cars get blocked in too despite the fact that there's loads of parking on road outside.

moan, moan, whinge, whinge, whine, rant

Pardon me while I wallow in my own self pity, but that was a write off, proper waste of a weekend, and I don't mean "boohoo I didn't get to ride my bike" either. I spent 90% of my time friday evening to monday morning curled up on the couch or bed feeling like death. The other 10% was spent shuttling back and forth to the bathroom, actually it could have been an 80/20 split. Nice. Just to add insult to injury, a load of my mates were out on saturday celebrating the arrival of Ferny's baby daughter. Another mate was having a bbq. A load of my riding buddies were out in the dales on sunday (which I'm sure lowey will be doing a write up of). Oh and lets not forget best weather of the year. Mrs didn't escape either, not only did she have to put up with me being a grumpy bastard but she had a rare night out planned with her mates but just as they were getting a taxi into town she started hurling so ended up back home suffering with me.

One single nice moment of the weekend, Charlie crawled for the first time yesterday and we were both there to see it. Awwwww.

Gratuitous baby pics

It was such a lovely day we went out for a walk on sunday, Charlie in his harness we had a wander through smithills then up through the appropriately named Horrocks Wood.

It was nice to be out in the sun, only the week before when we went to the Jumbles we had to wrap up warm against the cold.

Once up on scout road it would have been rude not to visit the ice creamery, if you are ever up there I recommend the rum and raisin. Charlie tried some of the cookies and cream.


Later on he was still hungry so had a chew on my nose.

Family day(s)

Bank holiday weekend and no riding done (!) did do plenty of diy but it wasn't all bad. Got up with Charlie early sunday while his mum had a lie in and got out the baby bike seat junkyard gave me. Fixed it on to my inbred - dead easy - dressed up Charlie and got out there! He seemed suitably impressed, quick trip down the road and then a spin round a bit of leverhulme park. He kept the back end planted but he's a heavy lump to drag up hills on singlespeed. The Mrs wasn't impressed but not too miffed so we had brekkie then went to feed to quack quacks at the jumbles, Charlie strapped to my front in his harness. He's getting a bit heavy now but we made it round the lake ok with no rain too. The ducks and geese came up really close to us which impressed Charlie tho not as much as dogs - he seems to like them. Up to my mum's for tea, my sister and hubby are visiting from cornwall, had a good evening, proper laugh apart from when I told my mum about charlies little ride, she proper gave me evils. Hmmm might keep quiet about future rides.

Well strapped into his seat and yes that's a smile not a grimace :-) cheers Johnnie!

Charlie's Big Adventure

Charlie went to his Granny's on saturday night, first night away from home since hospital and first night ever away from his mum, bit worried cause he won't take bottles but granny was not phased "if he's hungry he'll take it". We had a nice night, takeaway, couple of beers, chilled out and the mrs finally got a full nights sleep. Was great just being us two again. Picked Charlie up in the morning, he hadn't had a bottle but had eaten baby rice mixed with milk and the whole being away from home/us hadn't bothered him at all. He did seem very happy to see us tho. Already got him booked in with his other grandma in a couple of weeks :-)

Brass monkeys

Ride home last night was ok, a bit soft under tread where mud had thawed but not too sloppy. This morning everything was hard packed again only colder, tootsies were like ice by the time I got in. Speaking of which, I recently purchased some sock guy flames merino socks (£9) and some endura thermolite (£10 for 2pr) both pretty warm so in the interests of science I donned one of each on a big cold ride the other week. Not much in it for most of the ride but towards the end the merino cladded toes a teensy bit less numb than the others. The thermolites are cheap and almost as warm but velcro wrecks them (bit of a problem as I can't get my winter boots on without the velcro cuff folding in and sticking to the socks) merino are money no object and possibly a better investment in the long run. The flames are pretty thin tho, I'm sure there must be some thicker warmer merino socks out there.

In other news Charlies been keeping us up the last few nights, I ended up moving to the spare room at 3am, not good, maybe teething pains.

*repair* New cog & chain on the pompino
*repair* new Rear Mech (XT rr) chain & gear cables on kinesis

How cute...

is he?

Come dine with me

I decided to be all posh and have a dinner party - sort of, we invited burk and his mrs round for a curry at weekend, their son is just 3 days older than Charlie so it's good to compare notes every now and again. They came in and I went to get them some drinks then the noise started. What the hell are you doing to that poor child? My ears were almost bleeding from the noise. Turns out they were just taking his coat off and actually he wasn't being that loud, I'm just used to Charlie and how quiet he is, even when he is crying. Perfectly normal baby crying comes as a shock compared.
I'd curried a lamb leg which was pretty good, not my best but I was pretty happy with it fortunatley so was everyone else. Burk had brought dessert, chocolate brownie chocolate cheesecake, mmmm. After a rest from the curry I went to get the cake "shall I just quarter it?" that got a yes from everyone. Ah bit bigger than I expected, bloody huge in fact. Only two of us managed to finish (yes I was one of them) I checked the box later, 1Kg of cake (over 1/2lb each!) and apparently it serves 10 normal people! Yes I am feeling a bit of a glutton now.

Cheeky monkey

Charlie is getting bigger (12lb 12oz now) and louder. He was a pain last week when his mum went on her works do, he was content all evening but later on he got tired and cranky but I couldn't get him off to sleep til the early hours. Still not getting much response from him, he seems like just someone to look after at the moment, can't wait for him to start interacting with us properly. Mind you the other night he looked me straight in the eye and said "eh wo" (yes I know he wasn't saying hello but it was still cute) He smiles a lot and is mesmerised by flashing lights of his playmat thing bet he'll love the christmas tree when its's up! Nights are varied, he alternates between sleeping through the night and waking every 2 hours for feeds but his mum normally takes care of all that - for which I am eternally grateful, no doubt this will change when her maternity leave is up. Still don't feel like a dad tho, don't feel old or mature enough. However while I used to ride along with songs from radio or tv running through my head now I've got kids rhymes/songs rattling around in there..."we know frogs go shoobidoobydoo..."

progeny update

Charlie is doing fine, he still sleeps well at night and doesn't cry very often or loudly. He's even got used to having a bath, it was one of the few things that made him cry but he's dead chilled about it now and takes it all in his stride. He's also started to smile, despite the fact that he's pretty stupid* he still manages to sense when there a camera anywhere near him and promptly stops smiling, so as of yet no one has managed to get a picture. Turning into a proper chubber too.

*sorry but he is, when he's hungry he sucks on his blankets/clothes and if I pick him up with my hands under his oxters he'll clamp his gob round my thumb and suck for a good few minutes before he realises there's no milk.

I R Big Jessy

When Charlie was born he was too lazy to feed so he became jaundiced, this required an extended trip to the hospital and quite a few blood tests, this involved cutting his heel then depending on the nurse doing it gently coaxing some blood out or bending his foot so far up towards his shin I thought his foot would break. Anyway thanks to this I now know the most gut wrenching thing in the world is listening to your child cry from genuine pain (as opposed to crying cos they are hungry, hot, cold, dirty or just plain bored) Anyway I was trimming Charlies nails last night, he keeps trying to scratch his face (can you see where this is going yet?) as I clipped his thumbnail he started crying, looking down I saw I'd caught a bit of skin and made a small cut on his thumb. Aaaargh! He stopped crying pretty quick but that didn't stop me feeling like a crap dad for the rest of the night. Kids are painful - oh and I'm never cutting his nails again.

Kids eh?

A while ago whilst talking to some (mainly female) work colleagues I described kids as expensive little bundles of pain and misery and I was pretty much lambasted for it. So now I have one of the little bundles of my own what do I think, well lets see. Expensive, you betcha, have you seen the price of "travel systems" and baby furniture? Not cheap. Charlie certainly caused his mum a fair amount of pain during birth and the amount of emotional turmoil we've been through since could certainly be classed as suffering. So spot on I reckon. Highly reccomended tho :-) Kind of like climbing big hills then, slag them of all day, nowt good to say about them but the results magic.